Some people are too poor of caliber and do not love the truth. No matter how the truth is fellowshipped about, they’re not up to it. They have believed in God for many years and still cannot talk about any real experiences or understanding. So, they determine that they are not among God’s predestined, chosen people, and that they cannot be saved by God, no matter how many more years they believe in Him. They hold in their hearts, “Only those who are predestined and chosen by God can be saved, and all those who are too poor of caliber and unable to understand the truth are not among God’s predestined, chosen people; they could not be saved, even if they believed.” They think God does not determine people’s outcome based on their manifestations and behavior. If this is your thinking, you greatly misunderstand God. If God truly acted so, would He be righteous? God determines people’s outcome with one principle: Ultimately, people’s outcome will be determined based on their own manifestations and behavior. If you cannot see God’s righteous disposition and are always misunderstanding God and distorting His wishes, such that you’re always pessimistic and disappointed, is that not self-inflicted? If you don’t understand how God’s predetermination works, you should seek truth from God in His words and not blindly determine that you are not among His predestined, chosen people. This is a serious misunderstanding of God! You simply don’t know God’s work at all, and you don’t understand God’s intentions, much less the painstaking effort behind God’s six thousand years of management work. You give up on yourself, speculate and doubt God, fearing that you are a service-doer who will be eliminated once you have finished your service, always ruminating, “Why should I do my duty? Am I rendering service as I do my duty? Wouldn’t I be falling for a trick, if I were disposed of when I’ve finished rendering my service?” What do you make of this thinking? Can you discern it? You always misunderstand God, categorizing Him among the devil kings that rule in the world, guarding your heart against Him, always thinking He is as selfish and despicable as humans. You never believe that He loves mankind, and you never believe in His sincerity in saving mankind. If you’re always characterizing yourself as a service-doer and fear being eliminated after rendering your service, then yours is the deceitful mentality of disbelievers. Nonbelievers don’t believe in God because they don’t admit there is a God, nor that God’s word is the truth. Given that you believe in God, why don’t you have faith in Him? Why don’t you admit that God’s word is the truth? You are unwilling to do your duty, and you undergo no hardships in order to practice the truth, and as a result, you have still not gained the truth, despite your many years of faith in God, and despite all that, you push the blame off onto God in the end, saying that He has not predestined you, that He has not been sincere with you. What problem is that? You misunderstand God’s wishes, and do not believe His words, and neither put the truth into practice nor show your loyalty while performing your duty. How can you satisfy God’s intentions? How can you gain the work of the Holy Spirit and understand the truth? Such people are not even qualified to be service-doers, so how could they be qualified to negotiate with God? If you think God is not righteous, why do you believe in Him? You always want God to say to you, personally, “You are of the people of the kingdom; this will never change” before you exert yourself for His house, and if He doesn’t, you will never give Him your heart. How rebellious and intransigent such people are! I see there are a great many people who never focus on changing their dispositions, much less on practicing the truth. They focus only on asking at every turn whether they’ll be able to obtain a good destination, how God will treat them, whether He has a predestination for them to be His people, and other such matters of hearsay. How can such people, who don’t attend to their proper work, obtain the truth? How can they remain in God’s house? Now, I solemnly tell you: Though a person may be predestined, if they cannot accept the truth and put it into practice to achieve submission to God, then being eliminated will be their ultimate outcome. Only those people who sincerely expend themselves for God, and put the truth into practice with all their strength, will be able to survive and enter into God’s kingdom. Though others may see them as someone who is not predestined to remain, they will have a better destination than those supposedly predestined people who have never had loyalty to God, on account of God’s righteous disposition. Do you believe these words? If you cannot believe these words and continue your obstinate straying, then I tell you, you certainly will not be able to survive, because you are simply not someone with true belief in God or a love of the truth. Since this is so, God’s predestination is not important. The reason I say so is because in the end, God will determine people’s outcomes by their manifestations and behavior, whereas God’s predestination only plays a small role objectively, not a leading role. Do you understand this?

Some people say: “I’ve got a bad disposition and can’t change it, no matter how much I pursue that. So I’ll just let nature take its course. If I can’t succeed in my pursuit, there’s nothing to be done about it.” Such people are extremely negative, so much so that they have given up hope for themselves. These people are irredeemable. Have you put in effort? If you truly have, and are willing to suffer hardship, why can you just not rebel against the flesh? Are you not a person with a heart and a brain? How do you pray each day? Wouldn’t you seek the truth and rely on God? For you, to let nature take its course means to wait passively, not to cooperate actively. To let nature take its course in that way is akin to saying, “I don’t need to do anything; everything is predetermined by God, either way.” Is this truly God’s intention? If not, then why won’t you submit to God’s work, instead often getting negative and unable to perform your duty? Some people, when they’ve transgressed a bit, conjecture: “Has God revealed and eliminated me? Will He strike me down?” God has come to work this time not in order to strike people down, but to save them, to the greatest possible extent. No one is without error—if everyone were struck down, would that be salvation? Some transgressions are done on purpose, while others are involuntary. If you are able to change after you recognize the things you do involuntarily, would God strike you down before you do so? Would God save people that way? That’s not how He works! Regardless of whether you have a rebellious disposition or whether you have acted involuntarily, remember this: You should reflect and know yourself. Turn yourself around, right away, and strive for the truth with all your strength—and, no matter what circumstances come about, do not give yourself over to despair. The work God is doing is that of man’s salvation, and He will not casually strike down the people He wants to save. This is certain. Even if there really were a believer in God whom He struck down in the end, that which God does would still be guaranteed to be righteous. In time, He would let you know the reason He struck that person down, so that you would be utterly convinced. Right now, just strive for the truth, focus on life entry, and pursue the good performance of your duty. There is no mistake in this! No matter how God handles you in the end, it is guaranteed to be righteous; you should not doubt this, and you do not need to worry. Even if you cannot understand God’s righteousness at the moment, there will come a day when you will be convinced. God works justly and honorably; He openly reveals everything. If you mull this over carefully, you will come to the heartfelt conclusion that God’s work is that of saving people and transforming their corrupt dispositions. Given that God’s work is that of transforming people’s corrupt dispositions, it is impossible that people do not have revelations of corruption. It is only in those revelations of corrupt disposition that people can know themselves, and admit that they have a corrupt disposition, and be willing to receive God’s salvation. If people accept no truth at all after having revealed a corrupt disposition, and continue living by their corrupt disposition, they will then be liable to offend God’s disposition. God will visit varying degrees of retribution on them, and they will pay the price for their transgressions. If you unconsciously become dissolute on occasion, and God points it out to you and prunes you, and you change for the better, God will not hold it against you. This is the normal process of a disposition transforming, and the true significance of the work of salvation is manifest in this process. This is the key. As an example, on the issue of boundaries between the genders, let’s say you’re attracted to someone, always looking to chat with them, saying seductive words to them. Later, you ponder, “Isn’t this sleazy behavior? Isn’t this a sin? Isn’t it an insult to God, not to keep the boundary between the genders clear? How could I do such a thing?” After realizing this, you rush before God and pray, “Oh, God! I have sinned again. This is ugly and truly disgraceful. I hate the corrupted flesh. May You discipline me and punish me.” You make up your mind to stay away from such things in the future, and not to contact the opposite sex alone. Will that not be a change? And having changed in that way, your previous indiscretions will no longer be condemned. If you chat with someone and seduce them, and you don’t think it’s a shameful thing, let alone hate yourself, caution yourself, make up your mind to rebel against the flesh, or confess and repent your sins to God, then you might go on to commit much more misdeeds, and things will get worse and worse, leading you to sin. If you do this, God will condemn you. If you sin over and over again, that is intentional sin. God condemns intentional sin, and intentional sin is irredeemable. If you really reveal some corrupt disposition involuntarily, and you can truly repent, rebel against the flesh, and practice the truth, God will not condemn you for it, and you can still be saved. God’s work is meant to save man, and someone who reveals their corrupt disposition should accept being pruned, judged, and chastised. As long as they can accept the truth, repent, and change, won’t that have satisfied God’s intentions? Some people do not accept the truth and always adopt a precautionary attitude toward God. Such people have no life entry, and in the end, they’ll all have to sustain losses.

As previously mentioned, events of the past can be wiped clean at a stroke; the future can be made to supersede the past; God’s tolerance is as boundless as the sea. Yet there are also principles to these words. It is not the case that God will wipe clean any sin you have committed, no matter how great. God does all His work with principles. In the past, an administrative decree was set that addresses this issue: God forgives and pardons all sins one commits before accepting His name. But for those who continue to sin after having come to believe in Him, it’s a different story: One who repeats a sin once is given the chance to repent, while those who repeat it twice or refuse to change in spite of repeated reprimands are expelled, without further chance to repent. God is always tolerant with people to the greatest extent possible in His work. In this, it can be seen that God’s work is truly the work of saving people. However, if, in this final stage of work, you would yet commit unpardonable sins, then you are truly irredeemable, and you cannot be rescued. God has a process for purifying and changing people’s corrupt dispositions: It is in the process of man’s constant revelation of their corrupt nature that God achieves His aim of cleansing and saving mankind. Some people think: “Since it is my nature, let it all be exposed. Once it is, I’ll know it and put the truth into practice.” Is this process necessary? If you are truly one who puts the truth into practice, and you reflect on yourself when you see which corruptions are revealed in others and what wrong things they have done, and when you see the same problems in yourself, you immediately correct them and never do those things in the future, is this not indirect change? Or if you sometimes want to do something but realize beforehand that it is wrong, and you can rebel against the flesh, doesn’t this also achieve the effect of being purified? Practicing the truth in any aspect requires going through repeated processes. It is not that a corrupt disposition will disappear completely after the truth is practiced once. One must repeatedly seek the truth, repeatedly be pruned, chastened, and disciplined, as well as judged and chastised, before their corrupt disposition is thoroughly resolved, such that they will have no difficulty in practicing the truth again. If one ends up able to practice the truth completely according to God’s intentions and have true submission toward God after being pruned, judged, and chastised, that is a change in their disposition.